


Mission

by gala_apples



Category: Bandom, Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Crush, M/M, Post-Series, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 17:24:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/738212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something fishy about Spencer sleeping on Pete and Joe's bus. Brendon just doesn't want it to involve dirty stoned threesomes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mission

Brendon’s not entirely sure how they ended up playing Risk. It probably has something to do with the giant ziploc bag of weed and the pipe in his hand. The bowl’s almost cashed, nearly all white ash, but there’s a small black chunk he suspects still has THC. Wasting is a sin, so he lights the nugget and starts a deep and drawing inhale. It’s this way that he loses his chance to intervene.

“Spence,” Ryan says. “Wanna bet on the outcome? If I win you have to sleep where I tell you for the rest of tour. If Brendon or Jon wins, nothing happens. If you win, I’ll buy you a pair of shoes the next time we shop.” 

Spencer is of course certain he and his red troops will win. Spencer is under the delusion that he’s a great player. The fact that he’s lost every game he’s ever played doesn’t seem to sway him, he just chalks it up to bad luck. At the end of each decimation Spencer says he’ll get his revenge next time. It’s almost sad, how he doesn’t learn. It comes as no surprise to Brendon that he agrees.

After he puts the hot to the touch pipe down on something that doesn’t look flammable, Brendon gives serious thought to throwing the game. Ryan always claims bottom right bunk. He has since they graduated from van to bus. Normally territory claiming done with a minimum of fuss. This time Ryan’s been complaining non-stop that the mattress is shitty. At least Spencer will be more stoic about sleeping there, when he loses. 

In the end Brendon doesn’t have to. As always it proves to be impossible to hold Asia, and even Jon’s Australian stronghold can’t win when Ryan cashes in and gets 45 guys. 

“I want you to sleep on the Fall Out bus.” 

“What?” A look passes between them that Brendon doesn’t get. Anger, he’d get. Scorn, or scoffing, or rolling of eyes. What’s on Spencer’s face isn’t any of that. 

“You agreed,” Ryan answers calmly. “Don’t Welsh.” With Ryan it’s not his expression, it’s his voice. There’s something in his tone Brendon hasn’t heard before. 

Jon grins, clearly taking it at face value. “He’s got a point, Smith. You bet and you lost. You better hop buses tonight.”

Brendon keeps expecting someone to intervene. Until the minute Spencer’s crossing with his pillow in hand, he expects Ryan to take it back, or Jon to tell Ryan to knock it off, or for Joe or Pete to deny him entrance. Then Spencer’s on the bus, and Brendon spends his sleepless night rolling his eyes at himself. It’s called the bystander effect. People get assaulted or raped or stolen from, and the more people around the situation, the less likely it is that anything happens to stop it, because everyone thinks everyone else is going to do it. He knew it existed, he's heard about it on Law and Order. How could he think he's immune?

Spencer is oddly silent when he comes back the next morning. Not his normal _it’s too early to exist_ silence. It’s different. And Brendon thinks Ryan knows why, if the gentle hand that tries to tug Spencer’s extremely ruffled hair into place means anything.

Maybe post-Brent Brendon’s just paranoid. At least they lost Brent to an alternate lifestyle. Losing Spencer to another band would be so much worse. It’s not like it couldn’t happen. Brendon’s performed with Fall Out Boy as second vocalist, who’s to say Spencer couldn’t be second drummer? The band might like it. Or maybe they just like his ass.

Brendon doesn’t want to believe something hinky is going on. Sure Ryan and Pete had that online thing going on at the start, but that was _Ryan_. And _Pete_. It’s harder to believe that Andy and Joe and Patrick are as skeevy, and that Spencer needs that kind of ego stroke. There’s no denying it though as the days go on. Spencer’s coming back in the mornings far too rumpled for just bedhead. One morning his clothes are ripped. At that point, Brendon has had enough. He needs the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it might make him. Pete is not exactly a subtle kind of guy. Brendon’s pretty sure if he was having a band orgy, with or without Spencer, it’ll be referenced. He just needs to be there to hear it. 

What he’s doing isn’t technically eavesdropping. That implies stealth. It’s more bus crashing. Hitching rides and so forth. Spencer might be with them overnight, but Brendon can be with them whenever he’s not on stage.

The plan doesn’t really pan out. All Pete can talk about is this new tattoo he wants to get. He’s even sketched it out. It’s the style of kanji, just basic thick lines. Brendon didn’t really figure him for that kind of dudebroness, but when he says that to Jon, the bassist points out a lot of people don’t like his tattoo either. He’s not the only one the questions the design. Patrick and Andy seem concerned edging on opposed. It’s weird to see Andy Hurley opposed to a tattoo. 

Every time the conversation comes up again -which is frequently, Brendon has the feeling the four of them won’t shut up about it until Pete sneaks away in the dead of night and comes back with the black ink glistening and his skin swelling around it- Pete combats their opinions with the same words. He says there will only be a problem if someone else gets it. The statement confuses Brendon. After all, Pete can’t possibly think he’s the only one with a Jack Skellington tattoo, and that duplicate doesn’t bother him. Patrick and Joe seem to understand it though. Andy doesn’t sway. He apparently thinks it represents something stupid. Brendon’s not about to draw attention to himself asking what the character means, but he does wonder.

After a few days of sitting in, Brendon’s about ready to give up. It’s not like Ryan’s convinced him that nothing is going on. Hell, when he says it in that tone Brendon becomes all the more certain something _is_ going on between Spencer and Fall Out Boy. It’s just obvious that the truth isn’t going to come this way. He’ll have to bite the bullet and actually ask Spencer why he’s rumpled with a fucking look of longing every morning.

Spencer approaches him first though, when he’s not expecting it. He crosses his arms, bitchface no softer for the years since the first time Brendon saw it. “Do you like Pete?”

“Yeah, he’s cool.” Brendon shrugs. Sure he’s sort of a dick sometimes, but then everyone in the world is sometimes. And he signed them. Even if he was the antichrist, Brendon would still have to appreciate Pete’s existence, just for that.

“Nooo. Do you _like_ Pete?”

“What? No way. Why would you think that?”

When rolled eyes get added to one of Spencer’s glares, Brendon knows he thinks someone is supremely dense. It doesn’t bother him that it’s directed at him. He is dense, obviously. If he wasn’t he wouldn’t be asking.

“You’re spending almost all your time with him.”

“Yeah, to find out if he likes _you_.”

“What?”

“Well I know he’d-”

Spencer cuts him off. “That’s not the what I meant. Pete’s got a girlfriend.”

“Yeah, well, you keep sleeping there even though Ryan stopped caring three days ago! And you leave every morning looking like you’re post orgy!”

“You’re.” Spencer stops then starts again. “You know what? Just stand there.” 

Spencer takes his clothes off and for a brief moment Bredon is hopeful. This could be some awesome sort of bro relationship thing, where they don’t have to talk, they just get naked. Brendon’s got his hand on his belt buckle in anticipation. Then Spencer turns into a wolf. Then Brendon faints.

When he comes back to, Spencer is sitting beside him. There’s hardly room for them both on the floor of the lounge, but Spencer isn’t looking at him, he’s looking at his callouses, and Brendon knows that means they need to have a conversation about things that they don’t want to have a conversation about. Or, in this case, Spencer doesn’t want to talk about. Brendon would fucking right like to know how that just happened.

“I basically gave up my clan for touring. Hard to be at the Vegas club every weekend when you’re halfway across the country. Not that I had a high rank or anything. Nowhere near the alpha. And not that I regret the band. Fuckin’ Brent. God. He missed his girlfriend, so fucking what? I miss my _race_.”

Brendon doesn’t know what to say. He should maybe apologise, feel sorry for the fact that Spencer didn’t have anyone to talk to about it, but it’s hard to focus on anything besides the fact that Spencer had reason to leave, and didn’t.

“But Pete and Joe are werewolves too. A Chicago clan, obviously. But there’s not a lot of difference with geography, it’s just a who’s your leader thing. So when I get antsy, Ryan kind of pushes me at them.”

Even more than a second ago, Brendon’s mouth is still. Of course Ryan knows. It shouldn’t hurt that he does and Brendon has just found out. Ryan and Spencer are practically siblings. It still does though, no matter how irrationally.

“It’s more than that, though. We were recently at war, and-”

“Excuse me?” Brendon can’t help it. They’re not the most intelligent of words, but how in the shit is he supposed to react to Spencer Smith, a teenager with a smile like the sun, saying he’s been in a war?

“It wasn’t like a civil war thing, not wolf versus wolf. It was all of us, werewolves, vampires, fey, warlocks, shadowhunters, against- Well. Things not as nice as us.” Spencer has just blown Brendon’s mind. He’s suddenly grateful for Spencer determinedly looking away from him. If he was looking at Brendon, he’d see his dumbass expression. “A short battle, but intense. Really intense. It’s good to have someone to talk to about that. But it’s just a survivors group thing, not a threesome thing.” 

Brendon almost replies he didn’t say threesome, he said orgy, but stops himself before the extremely stupid words are out of his mouth. “That’s good then. That you can talk to Pete. Do werewolves date non-werewolves?”

Wow. Okay. Those words aren’t much better.

“I don’t know what my entire species does. I am not the werewolf Lorax. But I date whoever the hell I want.”

“Do werewolves date boys?”

“Not really catching the not the Lorax thing, Bren.”

“It was my subtle way of asking if you date boys.”

Spencer looks at him, a hint of a smirk on his face. “That was subtle? I dunno, try courting me.”

Brendon smiles back. He can court like a motherfucker. The next time he’s got a free minute he’ll buy Spencer flowers and some rare steak.


End file.
